Amid empty bottles, ripped cardboard and squealing pigs at Marin Sanitary Service in San Rafael, state officials announced Monday the state now diverts more than 50 percent of its waste away from landfills – meeting a legislative goal set in 1989.

Officials from the state Integrated Waste Management Board came to Marin to make the landmark announcement because the county leads the way in recycling, with more than 72 percent of all its waste diverted from landfills.

“We got the first grant in 1989, and we were the first entity in the state to go countywide,” said Joe Garbarino Jr., chairman of Marin Sanitary Service, speaking of the county’s efforts.

Marin Sanitary has helped lead the way in recycling by being innovative. Its latest toy – which debuted in June and was demonstrated Monday – is a dual recycling can, which allows residents to put paper products on one side and bottles on the other. When the can is lifted into a truck, the paper and containers are automatically separated on either side of a partition in the vehicle.

That differs from many jurisdictions, which put all recyclables into one bin.

“We are promoting clean recycling,” said John Oranje, vice president of facilities at Marin Sanitary. “We separate out containers from cardboard and newspaper.”

Said Garbarino: “If you dump everything into one pile, it does not make sense. You get paper smelling like mustard or wine. This is common sense here, and there is a better market for clean paper.”

Additional sorters at Marin Sanitary further refine waste and make it reusable, Oranje said.

Garbarino also has low-tech ways of dealing with waste. He keeps pigs and other animals to help get rid of food waste brought to the center at 575 Jacoby St.

“As a state, we are now diverting 52 percent of waste, and Marin County is much farther along,” Margo Reid Brown, chairwoman of the Integrated Waste Management Board, said Monday at the malodorous Marin Sanitary Service recycling site. “In fact, much of the work done here at Marin Sanitary Service – and recycling efforts led by the Garbarino family – were used as a model to help California cities reduce what they are throwing away.”

In 1989, the state Legislature passed the California Integrated Waste Management Act – AB 939 – requiring each jurisdiction to divert 25 percent of waste by 1995 and 50 percent by 2000, although extensions were allowed.

As of last month, California diverted 46 million tons of the 88 million tons of solid municipal wastes it generates yearly. In 1990, California diverted just 10 percent of its garbage.

Each year, recycling saves enough energy to power 1.4 million California homes and reduces water pollution by 27,000 tons. Recycling also saves 14 million trees and helps to reduce air pollution by 165,000 tons, according to Integrated Waste Management Board officials.

California also has created an industry of 5,300 businesses connected to recycling. Recycling now accounts for 85,000 jobs, generates $4 billion in salaries and wages and produces $10 billion worth of goods and services annually, Brown said.

Landfills’ decomposing garbage is a primary source of man-made methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times stronger than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the Earth’s atmosphere. Reducing the amount of waste that ends up in landfills has the potential to curb the overall production of methane and cut global warming emissions, officials noted.

Already, the efforts are working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an amount equal to taking 3.8 million passenger cars off the highway each day, officials said.

California has a stated goal of zero waste to landfills, although there is no legislative mandate for that objective.

“Our goal is zero waste,” said Dave Jones, a San Anselmo resident who works for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “It will be challenging. We will have to go to that next level.”